Perdido's latest crisis is suicide.
He's bandied about the threat suicide before. The first crisis occurred ca. 2010. He was living independently in a town an hour or two north of my mother and attending community college. Maybe the suicide threat came when his then-girlfriend broke up with him for freaking out on her twin sister. He was working at a nursing home at the time and had what I can only imagine is the easiest job you can have in a nursing home: food prep. He, the girlfriend, and the sister worked together, but I can't recall what the catalyst was for his freak-out. In retrospect, it seems remarkable that he was juggling these four medallions of adulthood: job, girlfriend, university, independent living. He has not achieved such a high degree of independence since.
With the 2010 suicide threat, my mom and I coaxed him into admitting himself to the hospital. He was released shortly thereafter, without ceremony or (more importantly) a diagnosis, other than the cocktail of depression, anxiety, and OCD that he had carried with him since at least the sixth grade. He disliked the hospital, and seemed to think that the nurses and doctors were talking about him, and that there were cameras trained on him at all times. He did not like the distant screams of the more disturbed patients on the ward.
The recent suicide threats began when his girlfriend broke up with him in mid-August. Briefly, they began dating in early July. Within three days, they were "engaged" and he made her take some sort of written and spoken vow. (I discovered later from the girlfriend that she never referred to herself as engaged or told her family; it seems to have been a one-sided delusion.) Later that month, she contacted me for advice. He was bullying her and her best friend about their pro-LGBT beliefs, as well as their behavior toward him which he imagined to be hateful. She also had difficulty with his strong criticism of others: liberals, gays, rich people, anti-Christians, feminists, etc. He claimed that she hated him because he was a "Christian man." Definitely a lot of unprovoked paranoia on his part. She has some physical disabilities which I think prevented her from seeing the extent of his illness sooner. Anyway, with my advice she extricated herself from the relationship, which was only a month-old.
Perdido then began posting suicide threats on social media. At one point, he even said something to the effect of "If you're wondering who to blame for my death, the guilty party is [girlfriend] and her number is [omitted]." He quickly took it down, but continued to harass her and her best friend, attempting to make the girlfriend responsible for his suicidal thoughts.
Whether he really is suicidal is up for debate. I'm inclined to think that he isn't. I'll get into this in-depth later, but he operates with the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old. The threats are a way for him to get attention, but also to express genuine anguish. In sum, I think they're a cry for help. I'm smart enough to recognize, however, that one cannot take chances. He continued to post threats to Faceb.ook and send them via text-message for a full month. My mom urged him to go to the hospital, but he would not take her advice.
The situation came to a head a month later, when the entire family, including my father, had gathered at my mom's house to celebrate my 19-year-old brother's birthday. I arrived to find two cop cars in the driveway. Oh my God, he's finally done it, I thought. He's finally murdered everybody. One of his triggers is holidays--events where people other than himself get gifts--so I thought he'd gone off. A policeman came inside to explain to my family, just sitting down to dinner, that Perdido had sent a mass text the night before which said that he felt like dying and that he was voluntarily going with the police to be admitted to the hospital. The hospital released him at 1 o'clock in the morning that same night. Both my sister and I drove to the hospital to "spring" him.
He claimed that the text message was an innocent expression of depression (e.g. I may feel like dying because I'm depressed, but I'm not suicidal.) I tried to explain as gently as possible that unless a person is looking him in the face, they will not be able to tell whether he's serious. He nodded. I also asked whether he might consider changing therapists; he'd been with the same one for two years with no improvement. I tried to present it as an appealing prospect as possible, telling him that his current quality of life was poor and that the right care-provider could go a long way toward making him feel better. Surprisingly, he suggested that he might have something more serious than depression. He thought bipolar.
As of today, September 23, 2013, the suicide threats continue. My mom, sister, and I attended a NAMI meeting on the 21st. It is the first step. There is a lot of background to impart, family dynamics to explain. I suspected for the past two years that he had hebephrenia, but as of last week I'm almost convinced it's schizoaffective disorder. Of course, I'm not a trained health professional, but all of the symptoms fit, from the delusions and paranoia to disorganized speech to poor temper control to "[a] speaking style that others sometimes can't follow or understand."
This will be a journey of discovery for me as well, not just because Perdido still lacks a diagnosis and faces a lifetime of treatment, but because we've been estranged for over three years now. In fact, our positive interactions and heart-to-heart conversations all but ended when I was fourteen and he was thirteen. I hope to detail his symptoms and incidents of his disordered behavior, as well as connect with those who struggle with mental illness, either with a family member or in themselves.
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